United head to Bristol on Saturday to face the Pirates in their latest League Two outing.
Speaking ahead of the weekend game, manager Chris Beech said: “We trained hard at the beginning of the week and we had a day of rest on Wednesday, and we come together again over Thursday and Friday to prepare for a fixture we’re all looking forward to.
“We should have a couple more bodies back on the training ground, which is good. We’ll have good sessions, everybody will be focused, and we had a really good old-fashioned session on Tuesday with the way weather went.
“There was a downpour that seemed to go on forever and it was proper nuts and bolts with players sliding around all over the place. They’re enjoyable sessions though, and you can still take a lot from it.”
“We’ll dip in at Aston Villa’s training ground on Friday and hopefully, traffic permitting, we’ll actually get there so that we can do what we want to do on the way down there,” he continued.
“We’re going down there looking to represent ourselves in the correct way to try to gain the result. We want to add value for the efforts we’ve seen so far this season and that means we want to pick up wins.
“We know we have the capability to do that so it’s now about turning that into points. You’ve got to be at your best to try to get something out of each game and that’s what we train and prepare for every time we go out.”
And with the Pirates looking to settle, having suffered relegation from League One last season, he commented: “I don’t think any league is straightforward, and that’s even more the case with the way the world has changed over the last two years.
“I can’t speak for them but they’re obviously not where they want to be, but neither are we. Both teams will have a real determination to get a positive result.
“They have experience in midfield, in Paul Coutts and Glenn Whelan, but we’ve played against those players quite a lot, even since I’ve been here.
“Paul left Fleetwood and went to Salford, and he played in that game that was 1-1, so the lads know what they’re up against. My midfield hasn’t changed too much so they know what the capabilities of the opposition are.
“You’re talking about Premier League players in Coutts and Whelan so they have quality and they know what they’re doing.
“As ever we have to make sure they can’t do things on their terms by doing our jobs properly. We have to respect the opposition, we always do, but we have to impose ourselves at the same time.”
And on the desire within the camp to turn positives into points, he said: “There can’t be any stronger support than your players giving you absolutely everything, and they do that for us.
“I’ve been very pleased with that in the last two fixtures. I have no doubt over the course of the season we won’t play as well as we did on Saturday but we’ll get a positive result.
“I was very pleased with a lot of what we did last weekend, and you can have that ‘what might have been’ conversation afterwards, and in hindsight you always come up with the correct answers.
“In terms of a physical and technical approach, the way we went about it against Forest Green and Everton showed great aspects of play in both fixtures.
“The chances we created last week show that there are things happening which can support positive outcomes and we reiterate that to the players, because they are working hard at getting these moments to work for them.
“It’s easy to criticise afterwards and tell someone that they should score, but the encouragement has to be to continue to get into those situations. Confidence comes from doing that and from turning them into things that win matches.
“We help and support that as coaches and we talk about how we can turn our performances into wins, and we use what we know our players are capable of doing to prepare for the positive things we want to see from every game.”
